Many ink-jet printers are being manufactured and sold to individual consumers as printing devices capable of forming high-quality images inexpensively. Many ink-jet printers being manufactured and sold on the assumption that individuals will be the purchasing group have a simple structure, particularly with regard to functions that cannot be implemented by software, because of such factors as balance between the functions believed to be necessary for individual use and the cost of manufacture. For example, in many cases such printers are not equipped with a mechanism that sets multiple types of printing paper as paper capable of being printed on or with a function for sensing the type and size of paper currently installed.
Meanwhile, the spread of digital cameras and the improvements that have been made in the image quality of ink-jet printers have been accompanied by utilization not only of plain paper but also of various types of media such as glossy paper and photo paper. At the time of printing, it is difficult to obtain the intended image quality unless the user selects the target medium by a setting made using a printer driver and supplies the printer with the medium selected using the printer driver.
Further, ink-jet printers usually have a mechanism that uses a paper-clearance adjusting lever to adjust the distance between a paper restraining portion, which is referred to as a platen, and the printhead in accordance with the thickness of the paper. Various methods of suitably adjusting the arrangement of the device in accordance with the fed paper have been proposed thus far. Specifically, a method of performing the adjustment automatically in response to a command from a panel has been disclosed in the specification of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-238099, and a method of performing the adjustment fully automatically has been disclosed in the specifications of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 7-237334 and 10-006609. However, these implementations require many parts and are high in cost. Consequently, many printers are equipped with a paper-clearance adjusting mechanism that is operated manually by the operator.
In inexpensive printers, therefore, many paper-clearance adjusting mechanisms make it possible to adjust paper clearance solely by a manual operation performed by the operator, and in many the set state also is checked manually by the operator.
There are many instances where a printer is connected to a network directly or indirectly and is shared by personal computers or the like. In such cases the printer is not equipped with a paper-size detecting mechanism of the above-mentioned kind or use is made of a printer in which the paper clearance adjustment must be performed manually. In a case where the operator in such a system causes a printer that is not located near a personal computer to print data, the type and size of paper that is currently loaded in the printer and the setting of the paper clearance cannot be checked unless one goes to the printer to see.
Furthermore, in an environment in which one printer is used by a plurality of users, there are cases where a certain user does not him/herself change the type or size of paper but another user does. As a consequence, though a certain user intends to perform printing with the settings that were utilized previously, often wasteful printing is the result because another person has set an OHP sheet in the printer or has installed paper of a size different from that desired to be used originally.
Problems of this kind can be eliminated by providing the printer with mechanisms such as sensors that sense print settings such as paper size and type and the paper-clearance setting. However, such an expedient leads to other problems, e.g., increases the number of parts, complicates the structure of the apparatus, raises the price and elevates the failure rate.